Vigilantes in Mexico doing something

[Beany]

It's easy, I'll localize a scenario for you.

You're in your home, a couple cartel members invade your home and are holding you and your family hostage. Someone alerts the local authorities, they laugh and ignore the situation. A couple of your neighbors get their rifles out, set up, and shoot the 2 cartel members, saving you and your family. Violence saved the day.

Or, you are in your home, a group of vigilantes who have mistakenly identified you are a cartel member break into your home, make false accusations that they firmly believe are true, accuse you of crimes you didn't commit, and after acting as judge and jury, decide to mete out punishment. You do have weapons in the house, but didn't have time to access them. You and other family members are executed, as a lesson to others that their own lives are at stake if they fail to support the vigilante cause. The community is too afraid to protest, so live in fear of their lives because they are caught in a private, non-state sponsored war, and the violence begins to escalate out of control.

[Babe Ruth]

And here's an update;

http://news.yahoo.co...-173544410.html

Still think the Mexican government should be more focused on disarming the cartels as opposed to the citizens fighting against them.

The Mexican government could virtually eliminate the cartels by ending the drug prohibition that keeps the cartels in existence and fabulously wealthy, just as the US government did in 1934 when it ended the alcohol prohibition.

But it doesn't want to do that because waging the cruel drug war is good for the enforcement bureaucracies. Also, it allows corrupt cops and military individuals to also become fabulously wealthy.

[Dougward5]

Well...the government is so corrupt and the crime is so out of control . It seems like folks taking care of it on there own might be the last available solution . We have had to do something somewhat the same in the not so distant past. Remember the Battle of Athens ?

[preacherman76]

Or, you are in your home, a group of vigilantes who have mistakenly identified you are a cartel member break into your home, make false accusations that they firmly believe are true, accuse you of crimes you didn't commit, and after acting as judge and jury, decide to mete out punishment. You do have weapons in the house, but didn't have time to access them. You and other family members are executed, as a lesson to others that their own lives are at stake if they fail to support the vigilante cause. The community is too afraid to protest, so live in fear of their lives because they are caught in a private, non-state sponsored war, and the violence begins to escalate out of control.

We are talking about people who have been enslaved by drug cartels, through the graces of their own government. What are they suppose to do Beany? Just lay down and let them continue to extort, rape and murder them?

[Xynoplas]

How do you think the US gov't is going to respond vis-a-vis maintaining the border? This could spill over, you know.

I'd kill them cartels by legalizing drugs. That would be a game-changer.

[spartan max2]

here is and update on it. http://www.usatoday....lantes/4570299/

don't worry guys the government came to help!

They only want all the citizens guns

and they have already shot 4 citizens who where unarmed...

Corrupt SOBS

Edited January 21, 2014 by spartan max2

[aztek]

Vigilantes 'rehabilitate' gangsters in Mexico's west

LA NOPALERA (Mexico) (AFP) - Under the watch of vigilantes, a pair of captured drug cartel henchmen mop the floors and cook in a dusty, sparsely furnished house in Mexico's unruly west.

The duo once worked as "hawks," or lookouts, for the cult-like Knights Templar gang that terrorized Michoacan, but they are now in the hands of civilian defense militias that have ousted the cartel from several towns.

The vigilantes, who are marking their one-year anniversary this month, came together to combat a cartel that they accused of murdering, kidnapping and extorting their populations in the lush agricultural state.

The civilian militias now say they want to "rehabilitate" the less-virulent, low-ranking former members of the Knights Templar, because punishing all would be a tall task in a state where the cartel was so entrenched in society.

The two young men held in La Nopalera, a town within the former gang-dominated municipality of Apatzingan, sleep on dirty mattresses in a ramshackle house they share with 10 vigilantes.

"The order is to hold them for three months under my watch and simply convince them psychologically that they have to take the correct path," said a vigilante leader who goes by the name Comandante Patancha.

"If they escape, they may not be pardoned," said the mustachioed man.

- No better option -

If they change their ways, however, they can return home or join the self-defense force, which could earn them $450 a month, close to what they earned with the cartel.

"If the Knights Templar were to catch us, they would kill us," said Manuel, who gave a fake name for fear of being targeted by his former employers.

"Now I don't have a better option than to help the self-defenses," the married, 25-year-old father of two said

http://news.yahoo.com/vigilantes-39-rehabilitate-39-gangsters-mexico-39-west-195357869.html

[White Crane Feather]

It seems to me that people have formed a militia to protect themselves. Nothing out of the ordinary there historically speaking. They have a powerful enemy though, I wish them luck.

Edited February 18, 2014 by White Crane Feather

[Yamato]

And who polices the vigilantes other than themselves? Are they not a law unto themselves answerable to no one? It's another form of lawlessness, those who have the weapons and might make the rules. For the life of me, I do not understand how more weapons and more violence and lawlessness are considered to be solutions.

A vigilante isn't a law unto himself answerable to no one, that's not what a vigilante is, at all. It's a person who enforces the laws that are already there; it's not making up any new ones. The only difference is, is whether it's state-sanctioned. And as other posters pointed out already, the state is in bed with the criminals. So knowing that, why don't you understand?

[Yamato]

Just to note, that first posting in this thread is something I found last year. I find it odd that almost a year has gone by, the vigilantes are securing more villages, yet our media in the U.S. says little to nothing. Hell, today CNN had Bieber's house being searched as a breaking news headline.

Yea, it's another media blackout. Perhaps if we knew of the instability down there, it would make things even more unstable. But if it's ignored, if the struggle can't become bigger than Mexico, then it can be swept under the rug.